Neal and I have enjoyed spending some of our vacation time each year bicycle touring on a tandem, including two west-to-east crossings of America. Traveling from place to place by bicycle offers a unique perspective on the countryside, and oddly enough it also seems to offer so many metaphors that fit our work with Reneal IEO: the value of patience, the payoff of seemingly slow but sustained effort, the necessity of perseverance to continue through the varied but always-present challenges (headwind/traffic/bad roads/rain/flat tires/etc. in biking and hardware glitches/software bugs/heat/utility outages/complicated scheduling/etc. here). One specific biking metaphor struck me this week. On each of our long distance trips, there were complex emotions as we crossed the mighty Mississippi River: a feeling of joy and accomplishment, of so many miles behind us. At the same time though, there was a sense of sadness combined with a sudden reminder of life-after-the-ride. While there were many challenging miles yet to go, there was a realization as we crossed the river that the end of the long journey was now closer than the beginning. So although we are here in the Philippines, this week it felt to me that (metaphorically at least) we “crossed the Mississippi”.